More Bing In Facebook, And More Facebook In Bing

When Facebookannounced its new search engine earlier this week, it boasted how users would be able to tap into a rich new source of searchable information: all that useful stuff their network of friends shares on Facebook.

Google can’t get a look at it because it’s locked inside the Facebook castle, and because it’s all connected to your own social network, it makes it particularly relevant to individual users, Facebook reckoned.

For that, Facebook said, there is Bing Microsoft 's search engine. Searchers using the new Facebook system will also be given the option to see what Bing can find them; if Facebook’s users get accustomed to heading there first for their searches, this new traffic source could be a big boost for Bing, which has struggled to carve out a significant chunk of the search market so far.

So with that gift from Facebook in mind, this announcement from Microsoft is notable. From the WSJ’s Steve Jones:

Microsoft is adding more Facebook content to the social sidebar on Bing searches, including status updates, shared links and comments from friends related to a search. The feature is similar to Facebook’s new “graph search” and adds “an average of five times” more Facebook content to Bing results, Microsoft says. Microsoft and Facebook have been cooperating on search since 2010. Microsoft, which has been at work on the Bing update for about 6 months, uses Web query technology. Facebook’s graph search, by contrast, browses pages for relevant content and is rolling out more slowly.